1. Buy,purchase imply obtaining or acquiring property or goods for a price. Buy is the common and informal word, applying to any such transaction: to buy a house, vegetables at the market.Purchase is more formal and may connote buying on a larger scale, in a finer store, and the like: to purchase a year's supplies.

The surviving spelling is southwest England dialect; the word was generally pronounced in Old English and Middle English with a -dg- sound as "budge," or "bidge." Meaning "believe, accept as true" first recorded 1926. Related: Bought; buying. To buy time "prevent further deterioration but make no improvement" is attested from 1946.